High Profile
by JokerInc
Summary: Yknow, if you'd told me before I died that my afterlife was going to be in the world of shinobi, in the body of the legendary Yondaime Hokage... Well, first I'd have been amused by your imagination. Very creative and all that. If I knew it was true, I'd have been pretty excited. Few roles are more pivotal, after all, but it turns out that's just the issue. (OC/SI)


Chapter 1

How I Became the Fourth Hokage… Kinda

If you were to ask me, before my untimely demise, what I thought the worst part of dying would be, I'd have probably said something about the people I'd be leaving behind. How I'd hurt them by leaving and all that. And yeah, that is pretty terrible, don't get me wrong, but the worst part of dying? No, I'm afraid not.

The worst part of dying was not knowing what happened, not knowing how I died. See, last thing I remember was going home after a long day of work on a Friday, starting to drink, and blacking out. How I went from drinking the last of my beer alone in my room to dying was a mystery to me. The next thing I remember? Probably a close second or third.

-HP-

Everything felt… strange, like something was there that shouldn't be. That was the first thing he noticed. Soon after that, he noticed the stale air, the cramped space, and after opening his eyes… "_Why the fuck can't I see?" _He tried moving his arms, but met resistance in the form of wooden walls, all too close to him, all around him. With a jolt of panic, he came to a realization. "_I'm in a fucking coffin!? Who the fuck buried me alive? I'll kill the fucker!"_

Thinking quickly, the man remembered some bullshit he'd read on the internet about getting buried alive. The first thing he had to remember was to stay calm, breath slowly and shallowly. Next, was that most coffins are made of pretty weak materials, sometimes the weight of the dirt above alone is enough to break them. Didn't seem to be the case with this one, but that just meant he had to break it himself… hopefully.

With a plan in mind, the man tried just punching the coffin lid with his fists, honestly not expecting it to work, especially not expecting the lid to just shatter from the force of his punch and cover his upper body with moist dirt. "_Whatever, step one complete. On to step two."_

The man began shoving the damp dirt from on top of him down to his feet, slowly working himself up into a sitting position. This was far easier than he'd expected it to be, he remembered reading that it would be harder with wet earth, but this was feeling almost effortless to him. After getting into a sitting position, the man kept shoving dirt out of the way until he reached a standing position, then just kept going till he could see again. Grasping the outside world with dirty hands, the man pulled himself out of his early grave and rolled to the side, breathing heavily as he stared up at the almost full moon above.

"_I'm so glad that fucking worked…" _After a short time catching his breath, the man got to his feet and immediately felt some confusion. "_...Am I usually this tall?" _He proceeded to look down at himself, and got his first look at what was apparently his new clothes and body, as well as the distinctly not-brown hair hanging from his head. "_...What the fuck? Why was I buried in cosplay? I'm definitely not that much of a nerd, come on. Whatever, let's find out where I am."_

After a quick look around, the man made the quick observation that there were only two gravestones in the little clearing he was in, both right next to each other. Naturally, he decided to read them, maybe they'd tell him something about where he was in the world.

_Minato Namikaze_

_January 25, 26 V.A. - October 10, 50 V.A._

There was, of course, more on the gravestone, but that mattered little to the man. He was busy staring at the words incomprehensibly. "This… can't be real. It's impossible, you don't have a few drinks and wake up in the wrong body, in the wrong world. That doesn't happen…" The man paces back and forth for a time under the stars, thinking. After a bit, he stops, looking at his early grave. "Well, let's put that aside for now, we'll figure it out sooner or later. For now…" He walks over to the grave, and begins the process of smoothing it over. It was lucky the grave was fresh, or he'd never be able hide his escape as he could now. It was a necessary measure, he figured, whether he was in another world or just a part of some overly elaborate (and possibly homicidal) prank. He had to make whoever came here next think he was still down there.

Luckily, while the dirt down below had been wet, the dirt on the surface was dry enough to make his cover-up very convincing. With his work done, the man dusted off his hands and rose back to his feet. "Now, onto step five… or something." The man walked off into the woods, intent on finding something that could confirm for him what was going on.

While walking, the man became lost in thought, simply thinking about his current situation. After awhile though, he once again noticed that off feeling he'd felt immediately upon waking up, like something was there that shouldn't be. It felt… everywhere. Really, it was an odd feeling, not like any of his normal senses. He even felt it… inside himself? He stopped. "_Please let me not be right."_

With that thought made, he simply… pulled on the feeling, if that made any sense, trying to force it out of him, and he could suddenly see a blue energy surrounding his body. "Ohhh shit, I was right. This, this is bad. That means it's real. That means…" "_I'm gone. I'm stuck, here in a world of killers and monsters. This means that I've disappeared from home, maybe I'm dead there, who knows? Either way, now I'm…" _The man shook his head, trying to clear away those thoughts. It didn't matter, after all. He had to make do with what he had, like he always did. Even if he couldn't do so for the people he cared about anymore…

The man looked forward and resumed walking, concentrating once more on the odd feeling he had, trying to extend his senses of the world. It was… surprisingly easy, the lack of having felt this his whole life just made him that much more sensitive to the feeling of what he now knew was chakra, and his body was, unsurprisingly, already used to sensing it, as he could feel an almost absurd distance away, miles even. To the south, probably a mile or so away if he had to guess, he could feel other people. A really strange feeling to be sure, but he could tell they were people. The chakra was too concentrated, too different from the rest of what he felt for them to be anything else.

In the same direction he could feel several… pulls, if that made any sense. If he had to guess, considering the body he was in, those were almost definitely the Hiraishin seals the body's previous owner had created. Most likely, if he were to latch onto one of those pulls with his chakra, it'd teleport him to their location. Of course, he'd never done so before and it could be dangerous…

"But fuck it, not like I have anything to lose." With that in mind, the man concentrated on the one he could feel high above the others, no doubt atop the Hokage Monument, and simply… threw his energy at it.

And then he was there, looking down at the Village Hidden in the Leaves. No weird feeling, no flash, nothing. One second he was in the forest, the next he was atop a Hokage's head. He blinked a couple times. "_Well. That wasn't what I was expecting. I was thinking maybe a weird twisty sensation or something, but instead I'm just… here?" _

His eyes snap down towards the village. Energy signatures were moving towards him. Fast. He couldn't let them see him of course, but what was he supposed to do, run? He didn't have any other options, he figured, as he began to move towards the forest again, not like he could teleport or… "_Oh."_

And just like that, he was inside a house. He immediately focused on his chakra, making it as small and unnoticeable as he could. In the distance, he could feel the signatures that had been moving towards him stop, and then resume rushing up the mountain, presumably to investigate whatever they'd felt up there that had disappeared. Naturally, that meant they hadn't felt him appear here, that was good.

Regardless, he continued his observation of the signatures that had tried to find him. After reaching where he had been, they seemed to search the area for a bit before scattering into the forest, no doubt searching in vain for clues.

Oh well, they didn't seem to notice his presence in the village, and that was all he needed for now. With his current safety assured, the man sighed in relief and collapsed onto a nearby couch, already exhausted from the nights events.

He spent a short time thinking about what his goals should be, now that he's stuck in this new world of his, but eventually tiredly decided that that was a problem for future him and fell asleep.

-HP-

Future him had become present him, unfortunately, and now it was time to figure out what to do with his dumbass situation. He was, of course, in the body of the legendary Fourth Hokage. This had its upsides and its downsides.

Upsides: He was fast, strong, and had quite the large amount of chakra. He was capable of the hiraishin, though he no doubt still had to learn how to use it as effectively as his body's original owner had. His body also probably had an affinity for senjutsu, though that would be rather dangerous and suicidal to try out.

Downsides: This body didn't come with memories. That's the big one. That means he doesn't know the fourth's abilities, he didn't know what the fourth knew, and he didn't have the skill the fourth had.

That in itself isn't all that bad, until you think about the fact that the fourth was both incredibly high profile and supposed to be dead, and he definitely didn't have the knowledge to pull off a back from the dead ruse.

Naturally, he had to take a more subtle route. He'd have to operate in the shadows, or, alternatively, simply disappear. This world wasn't his to protect after all, and it had turned out well enough in its original timeline. Honestly, it would be easy to do. He wouldn't even have to go anywhere.

The house he was in, was, of course, the fourth's house. Like you might expect, the place was sealed to hell and back. He could feel it in the walls, in the floor, in the air itself. His own chakra permeated the area, as well as a second signature that he knew must have belonged to Kushina Uzumaki. He wasn't sure of everything it did, it was far too complex for that, but he was sure it would keep out unwanted visitors.

The only problem with hiding, of course, was that… Well, it would be boring.

Naturally, shadow ops was the only option. What he would do in the shadows, that was a little more complicated. First of all, he'd need to figure out how best to hide from people who were, quite frankly, far more skilled than he was. Hopefully the common cliche of the fourth having some kind of ninja library in his house was a true one, or he might be in trouble.

Beyond that, he'd need to figure out what he wanted to do with his time in the shadows.

A big one, to him at least, was finding and hopefully putting an end to Danzo. That one was definitely a little further down the line. He'd have to regain at least a fraction of the skill the Yellow Flash had had before he could hope to put down the Yami of Shinobi.

He'd have to do it before the Uchiha Massacre, however, so he was a little pressed for time on gaining that skill. Not because he had any love for the Uchiha, hell, not even because he wanted to spare little Sasuke a life of torment.

No, he simply couldn't let Danzo gain Shisui's eye. Gaining that eye would turn Danzo from a problem into a very real threat. While he never made any truly great moves with it in canon, he died after all, the Kotoamatsukami was a monstrously dangerous jutsu.

So yes, he was definitely pressed for time. His next plan of action was probably putting down Orochimaru, but that was far more long term.

Simply finding the man would be more difficult than any part of killing Danzo. Pinning him down and actually killing him would be a nightmare. The Snake Sannin was every bit as slippery as his summons.

Beyond that was the Akatsuki. His plans for the Akatsuki were… shaky at best. There were plenty of ways to approach them, but almost no good ways. Their members were either too powerful or too smart for him to really go after normally. He'd have to get creative with them.

Before any of that, however? Training. Training, training, training.

In a normal world? Not exciting. In a world with magic chakra powers? Ooooh, he was excited. He could shoot dragons made of… fire, and lightning and shit. Or walk on walls, maybe impersonate Jesus a bit. It'd be amazing.

Anyways, he should probably get off the couch and get to work. He had shit to do.

-HP-

A few hours and dozens of hiraishin kunai later, the man was standing in a clearing several miles outside of Konoha.

He took a look around, then sat down on the ground. "This is as good a spot as any…" The man proceeded to dig a small hole in the ground, and buried the kunai into it.

"You know, I should really think of a new name. Mine definitely doesn't fit in here, and I definitely can't use Minato's…" After a short time thinking to himself, the man came to a decision, remembering some old ass Naruto fanfics he'd read back in the day, before people really knew the Fourth's name for sure. "Arashi, that's what I'll call myself."

With that decided, the newly dubbed Arashi rose to his feet, and began his training.

First up was, of course, tree climbing. While he was well aware that heneeded to develop more simple skills, like kunai throwing for example, he also needed to get more control over his chakra… maybe. Or maybe his body was already in tune with it enough that he wouldn't have to. "_Only one way to find out, I suppose."_

With that in mind, Arashi placed his foot on the tree, gathering his chakra. He took another step onto the tree, and…

Slid to the ground. Well, guess that would have been too good to be true, wouldn't it? Starting from the bottom it is.

-HP-

Several hours later, Arashi has returned to the home he'd claimed as his own, and was searching through the house. Unfortunately, it didn't seem like there was much in the way of general shinobi knowledge to be found within the house.

There were a good amount of scrolls on sealing, of course, but those were far too advanced for his zero knowledge on the subject. Other than that, he simply… couldn't find anything useful. There clearly _had been_ something there. The empty shelves near the sealing scrolls told him that, but they were also not there anymore, so that didn't help him… At least he'd have something to fall back on if he ever gained some knowledge on seals, could have been worse.

Oh well, might as well go look through another part of the house instead. Probably clothes next, maybe Minato had something that would let him pass off as someone else.

Arashi proceeded upstairs to what could only be the master bedroom, the bed still unmade from when its owners had left it in a hurry only days ago. "Man, I almost feel bad, going through the room of a couple dead heroes… Oh well, I'm sure they'll get over it."

The man proceeded to begin going through drawers, finding exactly what you might expect… clothes. Honestly, nothing really useful to the man. Sure, he could pass for Minato going out on a casual stroll through the village, but that definitely didn't help him any.

With his search through their wardrobe and closet complete, Kushina had good taste in clothes by the way, the man moved on to the other furniture in the room, starting with the desk.

It was littered with papers on some sort of seal, he really had no idea how to decipher it, but when he opened the desk's drawer…

"God, I could kiss that woman." There, sitting there in the drawer, was exactly what he needed. Or at least he hoped so. It was a scroll, the words _Naruto Development Project _written across the outside in rather beautiful handwriting, far different from the more crisp writing he'd seen on the papers on the desk, and it was his ticket to greatness... He hoped.

"_Please let this be what I want it to be."_ He rolled open the scroll, and read the first line with some slight amusement.

_Kushina's Twelve Step Guide to Omnipotence_ was certainly quite the title. Probably an exaggeration, of course, but he wouldn't put it past the mother of Naruto to know a thing or two about power.

_Step One: Learn to Ninja_

Beneath this oh-so-detailed instruction was a seal, and with more amusement running through him he proceeded to push chakra into it.

Nothing happened. "_Why…? Oh, wait, I'm retarded." _With his idiocy now cemented in his brain, Arashi pulled out a kunai and put a small cut on his finger with a wince, before repeating the previous process of channeling chakra into the seal.

Naturally, it worked this time, and another scroll poofed into existence. After rolling open the scroll he began to read.

_Step One, Part One: The boring stuff that you gotta learn anyways, cause ninja. (Don't Skip!)_

Below that was yet another storage seal, though it looked a little different from the previous one. "_Huh, a storage seal inside a storage seal. I wonder if that's complicated?" _Whatever, he proceeded to channel chakra into the seal, and out popped a few more scrolls.

Looking through them, the seemed to be basic scrolls on kunai and shruiken throwing form, basic Taijutsu forms, and beginner chakra control exercises. "_Oh, right, leaf sticking. No wonder I was having problems with the wall walking." _There was also a scroll on how to unlock your chakra, but obviously he didn't personally need that.

"Well, no time like the present to abuse a mother's love for profit." With that fantastic example of moral ground in place, the man pocketed the scrolls and headed out to go abuse said love.

-HP-

Around a month later, Arashi was walking the streets of Konoha under a now perfected henge. It wasn't, of course, a real transformation. Naruto had stumbled upon that himself in the original timeline.

He wasn't entirely sure, but he was pretty confident the real transformation Naruto used was to the henge what the shadow clone was to the basic clone.

That is to say a better, more chakra intensive version.

Regardless, Arashi made the henge work almost as well. Really, it was simple. As long as you didn't change anything people could physically touch, you'd never have any issues.

Arashi has chosen to change his hair and eye color, as well as his general facial structure, but keep his body the same size so as to prevent any mishaps with bumping into someone or something.

Anyways, Arashi was on a mission. He needed to find a suitable mask. Why did he need a mask, you ask? Simple, he wanted one, it'd be cool.

Also it would help later on to have a disguise that didn't use chakra, as that could give away his location in the case of an opposing sensor. So that was why he was now walking down a crowded market street, looking for a stall that had masks in it.

So far he'd been unlucky, probably because he had no idea where to look. As he was walking, however, he saw something that gave him pause. A sign, on the other side of the street.

It read _Ichiraku Ramen… _

...Well, it would be blasphemy to not go to _the _ ramen stand, wouldn't it? He'd never actually been to a place that served real ramen before, unless you counted that one time at the galley when he'd still been in school, but he definitely didn't. It wasn't bad or anything, but he doubted it stacked up to the real deal. He had, however, had his fair share of instant ramen in his life, and he'd been fond of it… to an extent.

Anyways, he proceeded into the ramen stand, taking a look around. Everything looked fairly new, at most a year or so old, and it had a very comfortable atmosphere. As he walked in, the not-quite-old Ramen Man gave him a friendly greeting.

"Hello there! What can I get you today?" The man had a friendly smile on his face, and his whole being radiated kindness… Maybe that was just due to Arashi's views on the man, however, he was one of few people to be nice to the hero of this world before the story began, after all.

Arashi smiles back at the man, responding with a simple, "One pork ramen, please." With an accepting nod, the ramen man walked away to go prepare his meal.

As he waited, Arashi took some time to think. He hadn't really thought on Naruto, but being here certainly brought the kid to mind.

He felt a little bad, of course, running around in the kid's dad's body. He was sure if the fourth had a choice, he'd probably want him to try and be there for his son.

Unfortunately for him, he doesn't have a choice. Arashi intended to let the kid grow up on his own, he turned out pretty great originally, why not this time? He'd do some little stuff, maybe drop off a gift on the kid's birthday, still make the kid's life a little better and all that, but he wasn't the kid's fucking dad.

Anyways, Teuchi was coming back with what was no doubt the nectar of gods, so that train of thought needed to died right there. "And here we are," Teuchi let out as he placed the bowl in front of Arashi, "Are you new around here? I haven't seen you around."

Arashi takes in the scent of the ramen briefly before he responds to the question, "Ah, you could say that. Certainly the first time I've seen this place since I've been here. By the way, this smells amazing." Arashi proceeds to use his chopsticks to bring the noodles to his mouth, lavishing in the amazing salty goodness that the lunch brings to his appreciative taste buds.

As the man eats his food, Teuchi smiles at the look on his face. Seems he'd gained another customer. "Well, I'm glad you're enjoying that. Is there anything else I can help you with before I go prepare some more noodles?"

Arashi swallows down said tasty noodles. "Actually, now that you mention it. Do you happen to know a place that sells masks? Like, the ceramic full face ones. My nephew wants one for his birthday."

Teuchi gives him a thoughtful look before responding. "There's a shop down the street that way." He points in the direction Arashi had been heading. "It's on the right side, masks in the windows and what not. Place is a bit creepy if you ask me, but if that's what you're after."

"Thanks uhh… Ichiraku is it?" Arashi gives the man a questioning look.

"Teuchi is fine." With that, the ramen man goes back to his work and Arashi back to his meal.

-HP-

After a visit to the mask store, (Teuchi was right by the way, it was creepy) Arashi was now safely back at home, inspecting his new mask. It was pure white, made of some sort of ceramic, with no mouth or nose on it. Under the eye holes, there were red highlights reminiscent of the markings toad sage mode gave, and on the inside it was shaped to fit a face comfortably.

It was, however, just a mask. No special seals to speak of. No sticking to the face, it had a strap. No hiding the eyes, they could be seen through the holes. No special breathing seals, he just had to deal with it for now.

Luckily, he wouldn't have to wear it for quite awhile. Hopefully by the time he did, he would be more than skilled enough to make those features himself.

Speaking of skilled, it was time to move on to the next step in Kushina's program.

_Step Two: Ninjaing, but better… kinda_

"Ah, kinda better ninjaing. I'm glad I'm a kinda better ninja now." Truly, he felt honored. Whatever, time to get to work.

-HP-

**A/N: Well, I've taken a bit of a hiatus haven't I? I might update An Alternate Adventure at some point in the future, I'll need to reread it though.**

**I kinda enjoy writing it, so hopefully I don't lose interest later.**

**Anywho, I hope you enjoyed.**


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